Today’s Comic: “Meanwhile, at Lucasfilm LTD…”

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About this comic

Sorry about the lateness of the comic today. Was out late last night seeing Indy 4. You MIGHT be able to guess my overall sense of the movie from the comic, but I will leave the interpretation up to you. Enjoy!

UPDATE: A bunch of you have asked that I detail my review of the movie. Knowing full well that I will surely cover a lot of this on ELR this week, and other places, I figure I can put a bit of it here for review purposes.

**WARNING: May contain things that SOME might see as spoilers, though its mostly just common knowledge about the movie. Read at your own risk.

PLOT POINTS:
Indiana Jones has always been about ancient relics, human mysticism, and tomb raiding. It was never about X-files level alien lore and magnetic heads. It just felt entirely out of place in the Jones universe. So follow the breadcrumbs with me here: The Ark. Shakara Stones, Holy Grail,….Magnetic Alien skull. Dumb.

Indiana being a dad to Laboooof with Marian, no problem. Predictable, but reasonable. I’ll get back to those people in a sec.

STUNTS AND ACTION:
Arguably the best part of the previous installments where the incredibly fun and amazing action scenes and associated stunt work. The bits that made Indy more than a curious archeologist…it made him a bit of a super hero. A super hero grounded by gravity and natural law…which I think is an important distinction to make at this point in my review.

Indy 4 had those moments. The fire ants were awesome, crawling around caves and stuff is always fun, car chases are good too. But you know what? Those are the only good ones I can think of in this film.

Indy 1 had tombs full of traps, giant rolling boulders, spikes that can kill you if you trigger them, constant gun and fist play with Nazis, machine guns, the ultimate truck chases, fighting with Arabs, huge German dude getting hacked by a plane, tons of snakes, blow darts, rocket launchers, melting faces, and tons of whip action!

Third movie? Well, you get the point. It just seemed like this new one had hardly any of that stuff. What we got instead were set pieces that were borderline shark jumpers. I’ll give you an example. Indy hides inside a led lined fridge to survive a nuclear blast in Nevada. Everything is vaporized, and his fridge is tossed 25 miles up the road, crashing end over end in a horribly violent manner. Indy gets out and walks away. The other movies do not support this kind of thing at all. Indy can take a beating, but that was ridiculous.

A few more scenes that, again, for me anyway, take the series out of its regular universe of story telling. The Tarzan crap in the jungle with the monkeys. Sword fighting on top of speeding trucks. (Everyone remember the light saber fight on the floating rocks near the end of Starwars Ep 3? Dumb, lame looking, and moment killing…the car sword fighting is just like that. Thanks, George.) Pulling indy out of quick sand with a big rubber snake. The big alien ship. Multiple CGI gopher jokes. Multiple cheap crotch smacking jokes.

The use of the whip TWICE in the whole movie, equaled only by bad gopher jokes. Once you’ve seen in the trailer already, and once to save someone. Lame. It just felt like the conventions of the previous films, which we have all grown to love, were missing here.

ACTING:
Harrison Ford showed none of the intensity he brought to Indy in past films. He looked like he was simply phoning it in. Slow and boring. Karen Allen is even WORSE this time around with her acting. She was passable in Raiders, but horrible here. She also looked crazy and weird. Fan service at its worst. And why no Sallah?

Now for the big shocker…I thought Laboof was the best actor in the film. Was surprised by this. John Hurt is great as always, but he was mostly relegated to being nutty till the very end, so nothing in the role that was amazing. He is just always good no matter what. And I never have anything bad to say about Cate Blanchett. She eats up every role she gets and the audience is better for it.

I know not everyone will agree with me. And for the record, I don’t HATE the movie. But it is in a firm 4th place amongst the Indy films. 5/10 from me.

103 Responses to Today’s Comic: “Meanwhile, at Lucasfilm LTD…”

Jonesy! … god I hate that Mac character. Sure why not add a backstabbing SOB into the mix.

BTW, my opinion of the movie.. It was great, but not an Indiana Jones story. Yes, it had Ford as Indy in it, and you had Karen Allen in it. But no Sallah, and aliens? WTF were you thinking Spielberg/Lucas?

Yes, I’ll admit that Christian themes are pretty out there as well. Christian relics that are able to destroy all life, just by opening a box. Sure. But this politically correct alien crap can fly right out the window for me.
I’d rather have Indy start looking for the original slabs with the Ten Commandments, or something like that.
And surviving an atomic bomb explosion in a prop refridgerator?! Is doctor Jones some sort of superhuman? What was the point of that part of the story. To really set the time frame? I got that it was the 50s/60s from a lot of the other references. Also the race at the start of the movie seemed to be tacked on to prove a point.
Also where did Mutt’s camera go in the end? He took out a camera, the door blew open, the hat landed at his feet, and suddenly the camera was missing…

I just saw it, Scott, and I think I agree with you on almost all the points. This one is probably the most ‘out there’ (pun intended) of all of them. This one turned Indy into a cartoon character or superhero almost. The refrigerator was just kind of stupid and like MadJo said, pointless in the grander plot. Unnecessary to show when this was. We got it when they said weapons testing. Which reminds me. Why would they weapons test there, where all the ‘super artifacts’ are held? That is dumb in and of itself. The aliens, I guess well it was something they hadn’t done yet…

It’s still a pretty good movie, but definitely the least of the four. I still think the first and third are the best, with the second movie a distant third, and this one just below that.

One thing I was happy about. The cliche’ ending that didn’t happen. THANK GOD FOR THAT!!! If Shia had put on the hat, then I would have been a little pissed. It would have said they were going to milk it for another movie or two, and Shia doesn’t have the talent to pull that off. I think he was pretty lame as the rebel without a clue. His mom was worthless. No wonder she doesn’t do much acting. Bleh!

All in all a pretty good movie, but not great, and not in the same league as the other ones.